The present invention relates generally to seats for mass transit vehicles such as buses or subway cars, and, more particularly, to multi-passenger, longitudinal, vehicle seat assemblies.
A longitudinal seat extends along the side walls of a bus or subway car, or along the back wall of a bus, and normally seats three or more occupants. This is to be distinguished from a transverse seat which extends between the wall and aisle of a bus or rapid transit car and normally seats only two occupants. Because of vandalism problems and for other reasons, it is desirable to construct the seat in a mass transit vehicle out of a rigid material such as fiberglass-reinforced plastic or the like. Conventionally, each rigid seat is mounted on a seat frame and the combined rigid seat and frame are in turn mounted on a supporting frame which may either be cantilevered from the wall of the vehicle or rest on the floor of the vehicle.
An example of a conventional longitudinal vehicle seat assembly employing a rigid seat, a seat frame and a separate supporting frame is disclosed in Barecki, U.S. Pat. No. 3,625,565. In such a conventional seat assembly, the frame members on the seat frame are substantially coextensive with the rigid seat, in both horizontal and vertical directions.
As noted above, such a seat assembly usually supports three or more occupants, and it is often necessary to construct the rigid seat in two or more sections, particularly where the number of occupants is greater than three. In such a case, because each of the plurality of discrete seat sections is supported by its own seat frame, problems arise in aligning the individual seat frames with each other, on the supporting frame. An example of a seating arrangement of the type described in the preceding part of this paragraph is disclosed in McKernan, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,619,004.
In order to avoid the alignment problems arising when there is a plurality of seat frames, when the seat assembly seats three occupants the seat has been formed in one monolithic, 3-seat section, which is undesirable. Smaller seat sections, accommodating no more than one or two occupants are more desirable.